To improve vehicle performance, various types of internal and external aerodynamic flow conditions affecting a vehicle, such as drag/lift, underhood/underbody, heating, air conditioning, fuel slosh and intake or exhaust are tested or modeled. Of particular importance is analysis of airflow through a vehicle radiator. As airflow affects the radiator's ability to dissipate heat from the engine, radiator airflow analysis allows for improved cooling of the engine. A vehicle includes one or more cooling openings, such as grilles, from which air travels through the radiator, allowing heat from warm coolant in the radiator to be transferred to the moving air, enabling recirculation of the coolant through the engine to extract more heat. By analyzing the amount of airflow from each cooling opening to the radiator, the cooling openings can be repositioned or reshaped to improve radiator heat dissipation by increasing airflow through the radiator to more efficiently transfer heat from coolant within the radiator to the moving air.
However, in conventional radiator airflow analysis, airflow from various cooling openings is analyzed by covering the cooling openings in various combinations and using anemometers to measure the change in airflow through the radiator based on covering different cooling openings. However, selectively covering cooling openings does not accurately capture the airflow contribution from each cooling opening during driving conditions. A low-pressure region is created behind the covered cooling opening, causing airflow from an uncovered cooling opening to be redirected from the uncovered cooling opening to the low-pressure region. This airflow redistribution into the low pressure region creates an airflow distribution from different cooling openings that does not accurately depict airflow from the cooling openings during driving conditions.
A different method for airflow analysis more accurately depicts airflow through the radiator during normal driving conditions with all cooling openings uncovered. In particular, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) allows accurate simulation of airflow during driving conditions with uncovered cooling openings. As CFD analysis is resource-driven, increasing the amount of available resources allows more detailed, and consequently more accurate, analysis of airflow through a radiator. Hence, optimizing the resources used for CFD analysis allows for accurate simulation of airflow rate from each cooling opening through the radiator during driving conditions.
Hence, what is needed is a system and method for efficient application of CFD analysis to simulate airflow through a vehicle radiator.